OpenAI bets on big infra, launches India Go plan after GPT-5 hiccup

OpenAI’s latest round of strategy shifts centers on a hard-honed lesson from its GPT-5 rollout and a rapid global expansion that includes establishing a first India office in New Delhi and introducing a cheaper Go plan aimed at mass adoption. The company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, acknowledged the rollout missteps for GPT-5, while outlining a future built on massive infrastructure investment and broader international reach, including India’s fast-growing AI market.

GPT-5 debuted with high expectations for faster, more capable performance and stronger writing and coding support. However, the launch was met with widespread feedback that the model felt colder and less warm than GPT-4o, prompting the company to restore GPT-4o access for paying subscribers within days. Altman described the experience candidly, saying, “we totally screwed up some things on the rollout” and later emphasizing that upgrading services for hundreds of millions of users in a single day offered a painful but valuable lesson about product launches at scale. He noted that OpenAI has observed robust demand despite the hiccup, with API traffic surging and platform usage reaching new highs, while...